Arriving on the tail of The Act Of Killing, here’s another documentary that uses unconventional methods to bring its audience closer to the everyday horrors of genocide.

Cambodian film-maker Rithy Panh has deployed stubby, hand-turned clay figurines to illustrate scenes from the personal testimonies of those sent to work in labour camps under Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime.

Anyone anticipating an Aardmanisation of history should think again: these are fragile, weary and haunted-looking avatars.

Panh scarcely develops his argument – and perhaps doesn’t need to. That the Khmer Rouge were murderous brutes engaged in a rigid… Read the full story]]>

Three more films out this week: A Danny Dyer thriller, a classic re-release and Robert De Niro’s latest black comedy

Vendetta (18)By the lowly standards of the Danny Dyer CV, this revenge thriller is semi-ambitious and actually partway watchable with a central turn that suggests its star isn’t solely knocking about for the pay cheque. For one thing, our Dan’s pwoper bulked up to play the rogue Special Op, whose pursuit of the ne’er-do-wells behind… Read the full story]]>

http://metro.co.uk/2013/11/22/also-out-vendetta-gone-with-the-wind-and-the-family-4196707/feed/0Mike McCahill and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh for MetroDanny Dyer bulked up to play a rogue Special Op (Picture: supplied)Danny Dyer bulked up to play a rogue Special Op (Picture: supplied)2 star rating4 star rating2 star ratingMachete Kills, Not Another Happy Ending and Baggage Claim: Also outhttp://metro.co.uk/2013/10/11/machete-kills-not-another-happy-ending-and-baggage-claim-also-out-4141998/
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Danny Trejo and Demian Bichir in Machete Kills (Picture: Lionsgate)

Trash movie homage from Robert Rodriguez in Machete Kills, what Karen Gillan did after Dr Who and a honkingly silly romcom with Paula Patton.

Machete Kills (15)
Charlie Sheen as a tequila-slammin’, pot’n’prostitute-lovin’ US president, Mel Gibson as an evil doctor and Lady Gaga as ‘Whoever She Wants To Be’ join in the cartoonish splatter in a tiresome trash-movie homage sequel that originated as a joke trailer in Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse and is still definitely best enjoyed in… Read the full story]]>

The Fast & Furious series has become such a money-spinner that it’s now resurrecting its stars’ own abandoned franchises.

Riddick, you’ll half-recall, was the growling ex-con played by Vin Diesel in 2000’s nicely pulpy Pitch Black – and who was then confined to the bargain bin in the sky after partnering Judi Dench (!) as the hero of 2004’s needless Chronicles Of Riddick.

‘I committed the worst crime of all: I got civilised,’ thunders Big Vin at the beginning of this ideas-free reboot, which restores Riddick’s anti-hero status, dumping him into a sulphur-hued wilderness to… Read the full story]]>

A family of grown-up siblings reluctantly reunite in an isolated mansion (natch) for their parents’ 30-year wedding anniversary, only to be terrorised by a gang of psycho killers in eerie animal masks.

The dark humour is knowing (but not overly so); the gore swift, plentiful, occasionally inventive and

The only true unique selling point here is former Home And Away-er Sharni Vinson as… Read the full story]]>

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (12A)
Still they come, trying to fill that Harry Potter/Twilight-shaped gap. This adaptation of Cassandra Clare’s young adult series-launcher is an unashamedly derivative market filler.

Aiming to be the dark, ‘sexy’ replacement franchise, it immediately pitches itself at the 12A crowd. So our rune-doodling heroine (Lily Collins) first clocks she’s been born into a secret society… Read the full story]]>

Percy Jackson sails off into a CGI adventure (Picture: Twentieth Century Fox)

With twin cash cows Harry Potter and Twilight now sacrificed, studio desperation is such that even would-be tween franchises that failed to make an impression are getting another chance, this time in extra-lucrative 3D.

This one is about kids with parents who are Greek gods and its belated second instalment shades marginally darker.

Seemingly sharing his producers’ doubts that he may be a ‘one-quest wonder’, Percy ‘Son of Poseidon’ Jackson (Logan Lerman) has resolved to pluck the Golden Fleece from its current resting place in, erm, the Bermuda Triangle.

The Frozen Ground (15)
Nicolas Cage (pictured) is a heroic cop with a maverick streak on ‘one last case’; John Cusack is a creepy serial killer; 50 Cent is a pimp and Vanessa Hudgens tries to dirty her High School Musical image (bless her) by playing a pole-dancing crack whore: this is the kind of by-the-book, no-surprises, ‘based on actual events’ serial killer thriller you… Read the full story]]>

THE DEEP (12A)
Baltasar Kormákur took a break between Hollywood assignments (2 Guns opens next month) and went home to make a no-frills film that became Iceland’s Oscar entry. A true story of tragedy and hope, it’s a moving modern Icelandic saga extolling endurance in the bleakest circumstances.
Ólafur Darri Ólafsson stars as big, shy, quiet fisherman Gulli, a softie among the hardy Westmann Islands folk. In a Perfect Storm scenario, a fishing boat capsizes with the loss of all hands except Gulli who, in an extraordinary feat, swam for… Read the full story]]>

Jason’s sole hope of early release is to turn supergrass, compelling Matthews Sr to wade manfully into the underworld and find someone for Junior to dob in.… Read the full story]]>

http://metro.co.uk/2013/06/21/snitch-the-rock-has-made-a-frowning-funless-non-thriller-3849740/feed/0Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson stars as a father desperate to free his son from jail in Snitch (Picture: Momentum Pictures)Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson stars as a father desperate to free his son from jail in Snitch (Picture: Momentum Pictures)Also out: My Neighbour Totoro, Grave Of The Fireflies and Benjamin Britten: Peace And Conflicthttp://metro.co.uk/2013/05/24/also-out-my-neighbour-totoro-grave-of-the-fireflies-and-benjamin-britten-peace-and-conflict-3806550/
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Hand-drawn Totoro is the visual equivalent of a hug (Picture: supplied)

My Neighbour Totoro (U)

Picture a huge furry owl with paws and whiskers and you’ll get close to what Totoro looks like. A cuddly, non-speaking woodland spirit who can only be seen by children, he’s the visual equivalent of a hug.

No wonder Satsuki (voiced by Dakota Fanning) and her little sister Mei (Dakota’s real-life little sister, Elle) want to reach out and cuddle him, particularly as their mother is in hospital with a lingering, unexplained illness.

Previous outing Fast Five pushed this once idling franchise into something close to top gear. Alas, its follow-up dumps soap in the gas tank, prioritising non-characters and awful dialogue over action.

Addicted to The Killing? Bonkers for Borgen? Don’t miss the boat with this small-release thriller directed and penned by Borgen screenwriter Tobias Lindholm.

When a Danish cargo ship is hijacked by Somali pirates, the ship’s cook (Pilou Asbæk) is one of seven crew members taken hostage.

However, don’t go expecting Under Siege with subtitles. The high tension here originates from the psychological war of attrition that plays out over four months between the pirates, the traumatised crew, their powerless families and the cargo company’s chief executive (The Killing’s Søren Malling), a hardball businessman determined to notch up another boardroom triumph.

Shot largely handheld on a ship that was itself once hijacked and co-starring a real life British hostage negotiator, this is authentic, nail-digging life and death drama that, like Borgen, is all about maturing character development and power politics.

Theo Stevenson plays a bodypopping Hackney school kid in All Stars (Picture: supplied)

All Stars (U)

Remember those naff Nativity comedies? The various StreetDances? Horrid Henry: The Movie? Then you may be reluctant to hand over hard-earned cash so you and your offspring can sit through a remix of exactly the same plot points. At least Ben Gregor’s film cloaks its cynicism with a bright, 3D-enhanced cheeriness.

Theo Stevenson and 2009 Got To Dance winner Akai are sparky enough as the bodypopping Hackney schoolkids staging a talent contest to save their youth club, while the… Read the full story]]>

Film review: Even the presence of Mark Wahlberg and Russell Crowe can’t save Broken City, which simply succeeds in making all its characters look silly.

Every so often, someone has the idea of getting two of Hollywood’s buffest tough guys to lock antlers and the results are usually a dull thunk.

Here, it’s Mark Wahlberg and Russell Crowe, dropped into a flat-footed latter-day conspiracy with – as references to ‘Sing-Sing’ and ‘shamuses’ make apparent – pretensions towards being a 1930s gumshoe movie. Instead of Bogart, we have Wahlberg as Billy Taggart, an ex-NYPD cop turned private detective. Facing off against him is Crowe’s hardline mayor who, on the eve of re-election, recruits Taggart to tail his apparently faithless wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones).

The scorecard will show that Wahlberg outpoints his flabby, coasting co-star but Allen Hughes’s film keeps finding ways to make everybody look silly. Marky Mark’s drunk scene, intended to reveal his character’s inner turmoil, isn’t… Read the full story]]>

There were fears this hokey adoption-from-hell chiller might be more damaging to Jessica Chastain’s Oscar prospects than any of Zero Dark Thirty’s controversies. But let’s be forgiving – it’s the type of project an up-and-coming actress might take in a bid to prove her range.

Chastain plays rock guitarist Annabel, whose hunky beau (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) takes in two young nieces after their father’s sudden disappearance. However, these skittering foundlings have fallen under the protection of a murderer referred to as ‘Mad’ Edith.

Film review: An Oscar nominee last year in the Best Foreign Film category, this tough, unusual Belgian thriller is finally released on to the British art house circuit thanks to Rust And Bone’s bruiser-in-chief, Matthias Schoenaerts.

He’s playing Jacky, a farmer who rules his region’s cattle market with an iron fist, beefing himself up on the same illegal growth hormones his associates have started pumping into the cows.

As the net closes in on the killer of a detective pursuing the hormone traffickers, a flashback reveals the origins of Jacky’s addiction: one scene is guaranteed to leave even hardened… Read the full story]]>

You’ll need a strong stomach to see out The King Of Pigs (Picture: File)

Film review: Bracing Korean animation The Kings Of Pigs persists with a theme familiar from the country’s more extreme live-action exports: brutally angry men trying to work out what it was that made them mad in the first place.

Two unhappy thirtysomethings meet for the first time since their schooldays and start discussing the bullying they suffered at the hands of rich classmates. These bitter reminiscences cue an extended flashback that often resembles Napoleon Dynamite as redrawn by extremely alienated sociopaths: a never knowingly understated outpouring of high-school trauma that extends to cat murder,… Read the full story]]>

http://metro.co.uk/2013/01/25/the-king-of-pigs-3365691/feed/0You'll need a strong stomach to see out The King Of Pigs (Picture: File)The King Of PigsBaraka/Samsara’s dual boxset is the perfect demo for your HDTVhttp://metro.co.uk/2013/01/18/barakasamsaras-dual-boxset-is-the-perfect-demo-for-your-hdtv-3356357/
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Samsara and Baraka lend themselves to the Blu-ray era

DVD review: The Baraka/Samsara dual boxset’s imagery has become sharper in the Blu-ray era.

Watched back-to-back, cinematographer-turned-director Ron Fricke’s New Age documentary globetrotters blur into much the same film. In both cases, we’re assailed by flurries of visual confetti seeking to impress upon us the beauty of the planet and the destruction we’ve wrought upon it. Both documentaries are wordless, save for some chanting.

Released in 1992, Baraka, named after the Sufi word for ‘life-breath’, juxtaposes Zen gardens and Hindi burial ceremonies with tumbling rainforests and burning oilfields. Samsara, a 2011 continuation taking its… Read the full story]]>

http://metro.co.uk/2013/01/18/barakasamsaras-dual-boxset-is-the-perfect-demo-for-your-hdtv-3356357/feed/0AY_101546647.jpgSamsara and Baraka lend themselves to the Blu-ray era Midnight Son is a promising horror that serves as an antidote to Twilighthttp://metro.co.uk/2013/01/11/midnight-son-is-a-promising-horror-that-serves-as-an-antidote-to-twilight-3347592/
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Film review: Low-budget vampire movie Midnight Son suggests that director Scott Leberecht could be a name to watch.

Scott Leberecht’s promising low-budget horror character study is very much in the vein – pun intended – of early George A Romero.

Jacob Grey (Zak Kilberg) has to live in a basement flat and work nights because of a skin condition that leaves him allergic to sunlight. We join him at a moment when he’s getting desperate, stopping off after hours at the butchers to pick up cups of animal blood the way the rest of… Read the full story]]>

http://metro.co.uk/2013/01/11/midnight-son-is-a-promising-horror-that-serves-as-an-antidote-to-twilight-3347592/feed/0Mike McCahillAY_101155503.jpgMidnight SonWhat Richard Did is an atmospheric study of a teenager getting out of his depthhttp://metro.co.uk/2013/01/11/what-richard-did-is-an-atmospheric-study-of-a-teenager-getting-out-of-his-depth-3347316/
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What Richard Did features a Hamlet-like sense of brooding (Picture: Artificial Eye)

Film Review: Irish director Lenny Abrahamson follows up cult comedies Adam & Paul and Garage with something serious: a deft and atmospheric study of a teenager getting out of his depth in What Richard Did.

Born into boho privilege, Richard (Jack Reynor) is the natural leader of his provincial rugby club gang: the lads look up to this solid alpha; the girls fancy him rotten.

A relationship with the pretty Lara (Roisin Murphy) seems promising but the way he looks at her suggests something’s amiss, and when violence breaks… Read the full story]]>

Film review: Love Crime has mileage in its personality clashes but is let down by flat directing.

This undistinguished French drama limps through familiar workplace-hell territory without yielding much in the way of laughs or thrills. In the Paris HQ of a global agrichemical business, tough, career-minded Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas) is very much queen bee, stealing ideas from her underlings with an eye to securing a promotion.

When put-upon assistant Isabelle (Ludivine Sagnier) hits back by sleeping with the boss’s beau and reporting Christine’s plagiarism to her superiors, there begins a game of… Read the full story]]>

http://metro.co.uk/2012/12/14/love-crime-limps-through-familiar-workplace-hell-territory-3316132/feed/0Mike McCahillKristin Scott Thomas stars in Love Crime (Picture: File)Kristin Scott Thomas stars in Love CrimeRhys Ifans: I didn’t feel I had to please fans in The Amazing Spider-Manhttp://metro.co.uk/2012/11/29/rhys-ifans-i-didnt-feel-i-had-to-please-fans-in-the-amazing-spider-man-3078143/
http://metro.co.uk/2012/11/29/rhys-ifans-i-didnt-feel-i-had-to-please-fans-in-the-amazing-spider-man-3078143/#respondThu, 29 Nov 2012 15:48:43 +0000http://metrouk2.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/rhys-ifans-i-didnt-feel-i-had-to-please-fans-in-the-amazing-spider-man-3078143/Actor
Rhys Ifans talks to Metro about working on The Amazing Spider-Man and why he didn’t feel under pressure to make Marvel fans happy.

Rhys Ifans speaks to Metro about his ‘exciting’ role in The Amazing Spiderman (Picture: Sean Gallup)

Were you a comic book fan as a child?

No. I grew up in Wales. We didn’t have comic books as such. But they were a currency. Five Batman comics would get you a Sex Pistols single. Or it would get you a bottle of cider. They were always around but no one would collect them in any kind of anal way. They were often found in friends’ parents’… Read the full story]]>

http://metro.co.uk/2012/11/29/hugh-jackman-jude-law-rise-of-the-guardians-film-review-3078125/feed/0Mike McCahillMike McCahillrise of the guardiansrise of the guardiansUp There wants to be a heavenly comedy but is stranded in purgatoryhttp://metro.co.uk/2012/11/15/up-there-burn-gorman-aymen-hamdouchi-film-review-495483/
http://metro.co.uk/2012/11/15/up-there-burn-gorman-aymen-hamdouchi-film-review-495483/#respondThu, 15 Nov 2012 17:04:48 +0000http://metrouk2.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/up-there-burn-gorman-aymen-hamdouchi-film-review-495483/Film review: Low-budget supernatural effort Up There aspires to be funny and poignant but falls wide of the mark.

British comedy Up There aims for supernatural laughs (Picture: Wilder Films)

This low-budget supernatural bromance comes to inhabit its own purgatory: it’s aiming for funny, charming and poignant but ends up grey, laboured and nondescript.

In it, a pair of mismatched celestial functionaries (Burn Gorman and Aymen Hamdouchi) are grounded somewhere in Scotland until they can make the numbers in heaven add up.

Writer/director Zam Salim developed it from his short Laid Off – and it shows. At 80 minutes, Up There feels stretched, with only crisp, widescreen-filling images from cinematographer Ole Birkeland (The Arbor)… Read the full story]]>

http://metro.co.uk/2012/11/15/up-there-burn-gorman-aymen-hamdouchi-film-review-495483/feed/0Mike McCahillMike McCahillUp ThereUp ThereSamsara is an illustrated lecture which explores the wonders of the worldhttp://metro.co.uk/2012/08/30/samsara-ron-fricke-film-review-557207/
http://metro.co.uk/2012/08/30/samsara-ron-fricke-film-review-557207/#respondThu, 30 Aug 2012 15:13:16 +0000http://metrouk2.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/samsara-ron-fricke-film-review-557207/Film review: Time lapse photography master Ron Fricke goes on a spiritual journey exploring the wonders of the world in Samsara.

Samsara is a non-narrative film directed by cinematographer Ron Fricke (Picture: File)

Now a director, Fricke uses similar footage for this illustrated lecture, inspired by the Buddhist wheel of life. ‘Ooh,’ it coos. ‘There’s a temple. Some lovely nature, there. There’s another temple. There’s some people, scrabbling like ants. And there’s a cuddly toy in the ruins of a village.’

It’s a field day for gawpers and hard not to be struck by the painstaking craft… Read the full story]]>

http://metro.co.uk/2012/08/30/samsara-ron-fricke-film-review-557207/feed/0Mike McCahillMike McCahillSamsaraSamsaraThe Expendables 2 is a marginally improved sequelhttp://metro.co.uk/2012/08/16/the-expendables-2-sylvester-stallone-film-review-539099/
http://metro.co.uk/2012/08/16/the-expendables-2-sylvester-stallone-film-review-539099/#respondThu, 16 Aug 2012 15:18:12 +0000http://metrouk2.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/the-expendables-2-sylvester-stallone-film-review-539099/Film review: Con Air’s Simon West has upped the action in The Expendables 2, directing with a straight face that you’ll either warm to or giggle over.

Take two: Expendables 2 is a marginal improvement on its lacklustre predecessor

If you think about it – which wasn’t strictly necessary – 2010’s The Expendables was the bloke equivalent of New Year’s Eve: one of those multi-star packages Hollywood now thinks is offering value for money. It dispatched three decades’ worth of action beefcake on a mission familiar from countless straight-to-video titles.

With Stieg Larsson all filmed out, Jo Nesbo has been appointed the movies’ new favourite Nordic crime writer.Nesbo favours compromised, sometimes unsympathetic characters forced into scrabbling to save their hides but his USP may be his almost British sense of humour.Jackpot begins with an offbeat noir scenario. Born loser Oscar (Kyrre Hellum) sits in a police interview room one Christmas, trying to explain how he survived the bloodbath that did for his cohorts in a football… Read the full story]]>

http://metro.co.uk/2012/08/09/jackpot-kyrre-hellum-film-review-531444/feed/0Mike McCahillMike McCahillMetro life film review JackpotMetro life film review JackpotThe Flowers Of War is a confused attempt to sanitize atrocityhttp://metro.co.uk/2012/08/02/the-flowers-of-war-christian-bale-film-review-519476/
http://metro.co.uk/2012/08/02/the-flowers-of-war-christian-bale-film-review-519476/#respondThu, 02 Aug 2012 12:38:55 +0000http://metrouk2.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/the-flowers-of-war-christian-bale-film-review-519476/Film review: The Flowers Of War is a messily scripted attempt to make the horrors of war into audience-friendly viewing.

Picking his way through the ruins: Christian Bale in The Flowers Of War.

One of the worst atrocities in modern times, the Rape of Nanking in 1937 has caught the movies’ attention only recently, prompting three films in rapid succession.Following the so-so John Rabe and exceptional City of Life And Death, director Zhang Yimou (Hero) offers a largely fictional drama based on Geling Yan’s novel.In it, Christian Bale ’s opportunistic US mortician ditches his hip flask and manky Colonel Sanders beard to become an unlikely… Read the full story]]>

Its protagonist Clayton (UK grime sensation Ashley ‘Bashy’ Thomas, brooding nicely) is a talented young pugilist, Peter Mullan his tough South London trainer. However, training is interrupted when Clayton learns his younger brother is running with a local gang – and again when their abusive jailbird father (David Harewood), himself a former boxer, reaches out from behind bars. Will our boy fulfil his potential or is he doomed to follow in the footsteps of… Read the full story]]>